1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate to an apparatus and method for assigning a Physical Cell Identity (PCI) of a Home eNodeB (HeNB), and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for assigning a PCI of an HeNB, to avoid a collision and confusion.
2. Description of the Related Art
A Physical Cell Identity (PCI) of a base station refers to a parameter required to form a wireless cell. The PCI may be used by a User Equipment (UE) to identify a cell, and may be set during an initial setting of the base station. Additionally, the PCI is a unique combination of a single orthogonal sequence and a single pseudorandom sequence, and a number of PCIs may be limited to 504. Accordingly, it is inevitable to reuse a PCI that is used in another cell.
A newly installed base station needs to select a PCI for its own cell. Here, the PCI may be assigned based on two conditions regarding collision avoidance and confusion avoidance.
Recently, a home base station such as a femtocell is being proposed. The femtocell is a kind of personal base station installed indoors to provide services to one to four subscribers. A home base station may be located within an area of a macro base station with a wide cell. In a big city with a dense population, a large number of home base stations exist in an area of a single macro base station. In the standard, to distinguish a home base station including a Closed Subscriber Group (CSG) cell from a macro base station, an area of a PCI for a home base station may be separated and the PCI may be assigned. Accordingly, a range of PCIs usable by a home base station may be inevitably further narrowed.